Cell Phones

Huawei Honor 9 Lite Review of Pros And Cons

- Analysis by KJ David

The Lite version of Huawei's Honor 9 flagship, the Huawei Honor 9 Lite took some hits in terms of processor speed and RAM capacity, but it manages to expand the original model's 5.15-inch display to 5.65 inches and it slaps on a classier selfie camera.

Leading its cons is its drop from the original Honor 9's premium-tier 6GB RAM to only 4GB (A 3GB version is also offered), although 4GB still packs a decent punch, at least with respect to mid- and high-end smartphone standards as of this technical review. It also replaces the 2.4GHz Kirin 960 processor with a slightly-slower Kirin 659 chip clocked at 2.36GHz (main cluster), but the reduction in speed is rather inconsequential, since the forenamed CPU hits high-end benchmarks notwithstanding .

While this Lite edition loses its mother model's flagship-caliber 20-megapixel 4K-video-enabled main camera , some mid-range smartphone shoppers might still find some merit in its replacement: a 13-megapixel plus 2-megapixel PDAF-equipped (phase-detection autofocus) dual-lens rear cam . What's more interesting, however, is that the Honor 9 Lite has a similar dual-lens system (13- and 2-megapixel lenses) up front , bedecked with hardware-level bokeh effects , easily overshadowing its base model's not-too-competitive 8-megapixel selfie camera. With a total of four camera lenses, the Honor 9 Lite may have a decent shot at a spot in our list of the best camera smartphones .

Joining the above pros and cons is a 5.65-inch FullView display with a wide 18:9 aspect ratio and an FHD+ (2160 x 1080) resolution -- one of its key tweaks to the Honor 9's feature set. Sadly, though, it misses out on an ultra-high-end QHD+ (1440p) definition, which some of the top phablets on the market boast. Also tagging along are a 3000mAh battery scoring an 86-hour music playback time (over 5000 minutes) and a 64GB-only storage memory expandable by up to 256GB (The Honor 9 comes with 128GB of on-board storage).

As for its physique, the Honor 9 Lite is thinner than a lot of its contemporaries, at only 7.6mm . It also sounds more fashionable versus some of its middle-class rivals, housing its pros and cons between two 2.5D glass panels that aim to give it a mirror-like finish.

With a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and Android 8.0 Oreo overlaid with EMUI 8.0 rounding out its specs, this Honor 9 variant may have cut corners in terms of hardware, but it caters to users who want a slightly-larger display and a more fashionable selfie cam.